I want to start considering countries in addition to China as sources for the electronic products and components that I purchase.
Cherry AG became a public company last June, with the result that there's a fair amount of current information about the company's operations. It looks like Cherry continues to make all of its switches in Auerbach, Germany. It also has a factory in Zhuhai, China, but that factory makes peripherals such as keyboards and mouses. Apparently, Cherry has been a major player for many years in the Asia-Pacific market for gaming peripherals, but there are unsurprisingly sensitivities around competing with established companies that use Cherry switches in their own products. This would seem to explain why Cherry is not a significant brand for peripherals outside the Asia-Pacific region.
I'm interested in knowing whether there are other brands of switches that are made in Europe, North or South America, or countries in Asia in addition to China. It would also be interesting to know whether GMK, which makes its keycaps in Germany, has competitors outside China. What about keyboards? As I understand it, Fujitsu/PFU make their Realforce and Happy Hacking Keyboards in Japan. Are there other keyboards, in particular enthusiast keyboards, being made outside China?
For people who are interested, GBC, an investment bank, has a YouTube video of a presentation that Cherry gave in December about its operations, competitors and outlook. The presentation is in German, but the slides are in English, and closed caption auto-translate is helpful. There is more information about production in this presentation than in Cherry's annual report:
This screen capture from the presentation shows Cherry's operations:
Cherry appears to be quite dominant at the high end of the market. Re "Premium Laptops", one of the points made in the presentation is that Cherry has developed a low-profile switch that is beginning to gain traction in the high-end laptop market. The presenter also noted that Cherry does not do business with Razer, for what he called "political reasons":